Over the past 18 months, organisations and staff have become more de-centralised than ever before. With so many people working from home we now have a more distributed workforce than we have ever encountered. The management challenge and related cost in striving for consistency of communications across an organisation continue to increase.
Consistent customer communications influences
There are three considerations that influence the need for this consistency:
- brand promise,
- compliance, and
- the audience
Brand promise
Most organisations invest significantly in their brand and the implementation of their brand identity. The accepted benefits of having a consistent brand include:
- recognition
- perception of the organisation
- evoke positive emotions
- drive trust/loyalty
- differentiate
Communications are a significant “touch point” between organisations and their clients. These include invoices, statements, contracts/agreements, emails, SMS, etc. If these do not have consistency, what is this is telling your customer about the brand?
Compliance
During the past few years, we have seen numerous legislative bodies and similar legislated investigations into operations across most sectors. Following these, we have seen new legislation and closer scrutiny on compliance. It is now more imperative than ever to ensure that your communications are compliant and remain as approved before distribution.
Audience
A good portion of the communications that organisations distribute are complex (for example statements or agreements) and often are the source of queries to contact centres. If these change from month to month or are even different across an organisation, the confusion it causes in the customer base is significant.
Why consistency for your business’ customer communications?
Having consistency across communications is important in enhancing the customer experience, ensuring compliance, and contributing to your organisations’ brand standards.
As mentioned, we now have the most de-centralised workforce in modern history. Each of your employees has one or many devices where documents (quotes, agreements, etc) are all too often stored and manipulated by individuals. Another scenario that presents where different divisions are distributing their own invoices or statements often using amended or out of date templates. All of these contribute to brand degradation, compliance exposure and unhappy clients.
These challenges can easily and cost effectively be addressed through the implementation of a centralised template driven Customer Communication Management (CCM) system. The use of centralised templates allows the relevant parties in your organisation to author, change and approve templates ensuring that accurate and quality communications are distributed in a consistent way from any part of your business.
If you have any thoughts or comments, please post in the comments box below or contact me at john@airdocs.io
